“There’ll be one corporation making one little box. It’ll show you what you want and tell you what you want, and cost whatever you got.” Greg Brown, ‘Where is Maria’. 1996.
We’ve just finished four days of the 2023 FLXcursion Riesling extravaganza and I’ll be writing a lot about it, but I wanted to start with a recurring theme that is echoing through other parts of my life. You might imagine that a four day Riesling conference would spend a lot of time talking about acid, and we did, but this year I heard a lot of talk about how to tame that acidity in search of greater balance. This has naturally led me to take a brief (hopefully brief) foray into a pondering of the meaning of such things. To wit, what does balance mean and where does it lie? So, fair warning, this is going to get geeky and a bit out there in the fringes. My four dozen fans will understand, the rest of you might want to sit this one out. Follow me further into the world of balance and harmony. Oh, and they’ll be an album review at the end.
Sometimes I describe my sense of balance as being rather neutral, a word that invariably seems dull to me. But consider this, if the first thing your brain does when you put a wine in your mouth, is to ring a bell, that wine is not completely balanced. It might be a fire bell clanging, or it might be the faint ting of a wind chime in an almost imperceptible puff of breeze. Too sweet? Too acidic? Too watery? Too thick? It really doesn’t matter to me what it is, if one point leaps or even nudges to the forefront, then there is discord. Dissonance. I find balance when the wine sits pleasantly, neutrally, in my mouth, giving me time to ponder nuance. It’s as if I were to put on noise canceling headphones and eliminate the clutter of background noise. In a perfect world there would only be an initial silence, followed by the sounds of the symphony (if this is a, say, Mosel Kabinett) or of Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction (if this is a California Cabernet from the 60’s, something with purposeful force). In the real world some noise always gets in, there is no perfectly quiet background, no perfectly balanced wine. Exquisitely is about as close as you can get.
There’s another finger shaped lake in New York that is not technically a Finger Lake, but was carved by the same glacial processes. Lake Otsego in Cooperstown lies a hundred miles to the east, yet would fit in as a twelfth Finger Lake proper quite easily. I’ve been coming to the Finger Lakes for over ten years. I’ve been going to Lake Otsego for more than thirty years, thanks to the fortuitous fact that my friend owns a cottage there. Otsego goes by another name as well; Glimmerglass. When the wind becomes calm for a night, when there is no boat traffic, when everything is just so, the lake takes on the smoothness of glass, of a mirror. In thirty plus years I’ve seen the effect perhaps three times and it is truly remarkable. Any slap of a minnow’s tail, the drop of dew from an overhanging tree, the landing of a mosquito on the surface, the blip as said mosquito disappears into the trout’s mouth, any grain of sand disturbs this glass-like water in a completely decipherable way. On a windy day in Cooperstown, you’d have to throw a pretty big rock in the water to make any discernable disturbance for more than an instant. The lake is all background noise. When Glimmerglass occurs, the lake is as silently readable as new fallen snow. In this quiet place, this neutral spot, this is where I find balance.
Let’s think about that Mosel Kabinett symphony for a moment. Ever been to a symphony? There’s nothing quite like it, all the best recording and stereo equipment, trying to imitate the symphonic sound, are but pale shadows of actually being there for a performance. The space has been built and shaped for best acoustics, you’re there to experience the magic that happens when a hundred or so musicians that have practiced together incessantly combine their individual voices as one. When the evening is right, the music well learned, the members intuitively accustomed to each other’s peculiarities (when the band is tight), when the line is crossed into that almost unfathomable symbiosis of musicians and audience, when the crowd believes, and disappears into the performance… there is a certain magic to a moment like this, a certain balance. If you like, you can just enjoy the complete effect and not tax yourself with nuance, but take a moment if you have the chance and try to pick out the individual instruments, even the individual musicians. It’s not easy at first, perhaps nothing that is worthwhile is easy, but it is worth the effort. In balance lies nuance, and in nuance lies understanding. And that Mosel Riesling? It’s all the same people, it’s all the same.
First annual album review: Greg Brown, “Further In”
It may seem strange to be reviewing a twenty seven year old album, but I dare you to find a more relevant album from the last decade. Greg Brown is eerily prescient in most of these songs, almost like he had stepped out of a time machine from present day with a dire warning, and a protest, or perhaps a plea for sanity. Not only do the songs resonate with modern times, they mesh well with my place in said times. I’m not saying the songs are about me, that would be crazy, I am prepared to say that I share a certain number of emotional and actual experiences of the author. We’ve been through some of the same shit, although that’s an educated guess, I know nothing about Mr. Brown personally, other than that he is, or at least was, married to Iris Dement, who I hold in deep esteem. I discovered Iris because of John Prine, and I discovered John Prine only in 1993 or so, shockingly late. I had been a big Steve Goodman fan from the early eighties, how did I miss John Prine? Such are the vagaries of life I suppose.
Regardless, I discovered Greg Brown only a few years ago, sitting with Amy in Graft wine bar in Watkins Glen, New York. They had a pandora playlist or some such going and a song really caught my ear, I really can’t remember which song, but half an hour later we were driving back to Pennsylvania with a retrospective album playing. I was hooked. The cloud is both a blessing, and a frightening addiction.
So, the album. How should I say it? It’s a theme album; love and lust, loneliness and friendship, despair and hope, injustice and redemption. It’s an Americana opera with acts and scenes, woven together with a certain style that can make many of the songs start to sound the same, if you’re not paying attention. And make no mistake, this is an album that demands your attention, pick a quiet place when you have an hour to spare and ponder away. It’s social commentary that’s devastating at times (echoes of Barry McGuire) yet refuses to give up hope, or at least refuses to stop trying. All this, written by an artist with a deft eye for the present, and an unsettling accuracy about the next three decades.
“The road keeps coming at you, and you find no place to rest. And in these small dark movies, no one knows what’s best.”
The songs? Carefully created and placed in a remarkably logical order. This is a throwback to an age where the album still mattered, now the song reigns supreme. Try this sometime, ask a few young people to tell you the name of their favorite album. Blank stares. You mean songs? I have favorite songs. If you miss those times, this album is for you. The flow can easily be correlated to wine in a glass, and certainly Mr. Brown has a great affinity for mentioning fine wine in his songs, just imagine the flow of music and lyrics as having a mid palate and a long satisfying finish. Most of all, the album has balance. And a certain structure that leads inevitably on into some greater understanding. Or even better, empathy.
I’ll leave you with a small plea to take the time to discover this remarkable album. Aging like the finest of wines. Still relevant, still with something to say. Spend an evening with the nicest bottle of wine you’re willing to open for a regular day, but make it a pretty good one. Could be red or white, but probably red. Ponder awhile. It’s worth the experience.
Cheers, Jerry.